Against Illegal Graffiti Artists

Prague 2 is all set to clean its building facades and rid the streets of unwanted grafitti. The district council plans on protecting the walls of over 3000 buildings with a special paint that will make short work of removing all graffiti artist’s unwanted creations. The task of conducting the clean-up will be entrusted to a company that won the selection procedure, said Councilor Aleksandra Udženija to journalists today. The council plans on investing ten million Crowns a year into its anti-grafitti campaign.

More than 600 buildings are scheduled for the special repaint before the end of this year. The council wants to offer the service to private property owners as well, but only on the condition that the building has a well-repaired facade.

Continuous and focused removal of the vandal’s creations is the only effective way of dealing with them, think the Councilmen. “Clean, remove, clean. Hopefully they will get bored,” explained the district's strategist A. Udženija.

“We are prepared to invest ten million Crowns a year into this initiative although I believe the amount will decrease over time," added the Deputy District Mayor Jiří Paluska.

Every year illegal graffiti artists inflict damage totalling millions of Crowns upon the capital city. Along with graffiti on buildings the exteriors of public transport vehicles are also a popular target. The municipal police have been on the graffiti artists' case since 1998; since then they have identified over 300 culprits and during last year apprehended 96 of them.

Illegal graffiti artists caught red handed are in danger of serving up to eight years in prison. Usually they are sentenced to do some community service, but cases of harsher punishment are not uncommon either.